The other night we attended a very cool event at the Brooklyn Museum of Art: an evening of dance and comics strips. The occasion was a celebration of dance pioneer Isadora Duncan. The evening featured a full slate of dance from Lori Belilove and the Isadora Duncan Dance Company, while cartoonist Sabrina Jones presented biographical notes on Duncan via her recently published graphic novel biography of the dancer. We got there late and had to sit in the bleachers and you weren’t allowed to take pictures, so we can only snap the for-position-only snap above of Belilove and Jones doing a Q&A after the performance. As you can see, it was a classy setting, and the Brooklyn Museum of Art is an august institution, so to see graphic novels integrated into this level of cultural discourse was yet another level of acceptance for the medium.
And speaking of Jones, Van Jensen has a good interview with her up at CBR:
You clearly admire Duncan quite a lot. Was it difficult to try to “do justice” to the story of someone you respect so much?
I can’t imagine working so long and hard on someone I didn’t admire. Her impact on the field of dance alone is pivotal, the equivalent of Picasso in painting, James Joyce or Whitman in writing. She also looked beyond the stage, advocating for justice and liberation, especially for women and poor children. Throw in an outsized personality and a major appetite for love…At the same time, I realize she might have driven me up a wall if I knew her personally. To paraphrase her student Irma: She had no common sense, but if she did, then she wouldn’t have been a genius.
Heidi, ma’am, fix your headline. It’s not ‘Isabella.’
very cool. :)
So what was the audience appreciation like upon viewing the comic pages? If any?